Minnesota Vikings sign all three first-round picks

The Vikings' first-round draft picks, from left to right, Sharrif Floyd, Xavier Rhodes and Cordarrelle Paterson signed their contracts with the team Thursday. (Pioneer Press file photo: John Doman)

MANKATO, Minn. -- In a 50-minute stretch Thursday morning, the Vikings signed all three of their first-round draft picks, finishing their final pieces of offseason business and ensuring they would have all 90 players under contract before their first practice of training camp Friday morning.

Florida defensive tackle Sharrif Floyd, the team's top pick in the 2013 draft, also was the first to sign, putting his name on his contract in a picture the Vikings posted to their Twitter account just before 9 a.m. Floyd's deal was expected to set the table for Florida State cornerback Xavier Rhodes and Tennessee wide receiver Cordarrelle Patterson, and before 10 a.m., both players' deals were done.

All three deals are four-year contracts, as are all first-round deals.

"I think it was important," Floyd said of signing. "I didn't want to send a bad vibe to the team or anything like that. I'm glad I got it done."

The proceedings went down to the final hours before the start of training camp, just as the Vikings' negotiations with Matt Kalil did the year before, but there was little anxiety about whether all three players would get their deals done as of Wednesday night; Patterson had already called his mother to tell her his contract would be done the next morning, he said.

"I couldn't sleep last night," he said. "I had to call her and tell her what was going to happen to me, that my life was going to change a little bit. I told her I was excited, and she told me she was happy for me.

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According to the NFL's rookie salary scale, Floyd (the 23rd overall pick) and Rhodes (25th) were set to earn roughly $8 million over the next four years, with signing bonuses accounting for about half the compensation. Patterson, the 29th pick, was slotted to make about $7.2 million.

The rigid structure of the league's rookie wage scale, negotiated in the 2011 collective bargaining agreement, has all but rendered holdouts obsolete. That's the biggest boon of the new system to coach Leslie Frazier, who hasn't had to deal with the long absences of key rookies that plagued his predecessors.

"You were more susceptible to injury (after a holdout), along with trying to get up to the speed of the scheme and the speed of the game," Frazier said. "You come to camp, and say your No. 1 pick ends up missing most of training camp and most of the preseason. It's kind of a bummer for the entire team. As much as you try to eliminate distractions in our business, that becomes a distraction when your key players are not in camp."

There were brief moments to celebrate for Floyd, Rhodes and Patterson on Thursday morning; the receiver said he planned to take care of his mother first, and "when I get out of camp, I might have to purchase something nice for myself."

But he and his rookie teammates were right where the Vikings wanted them to be Thursday: under contract and in Mankato, ready to get to work.

"Growing up, this wasn't the dream for me," Floyd said. "Signing a contract was a great moment, but at the end of the day, my life goal is to play football as long as possible."